Warm-White Lighting Across Multiple Roof Levels
The project
This tall two-story home has a dominant main gable, an enclosed porch, and a lower side addition, so the lighting needed to connect roof sections at different heights. For this Arlington project, we installed warm-white lights along the main gable slopes and upper eaves, continued them around the porch roof, and followed the lower roofline toward the rear addition. We also wrapped the small deciduous tree beside that section to carry the same color into the yard.
From this side view, the lights trace the house’s stepped profile from the porch up to the main roof and back down to the addition. The evenly spaced bulbs make each change in elevation easy to read at night, while the wrapped tree gives the far end of the property a second point of light.
The challenge
The house is taller than it is wide, with a steep main roof, a screened porch built under its own gable, and a lower addition set back along the side. Each section has a different eave height, and a brick chimney breaks the rear slope. A line that looked right on the main gable could easily look disconnected once it dropped to the porch or ran out to the addition.
How we lit it
We outlined the edges that give the house its shape: both rakes of the main gable, the long side eave, the rakes and eave of the porch gable, and the eave of the addition. The ridge and the chimney stay dark, so the outline reads as a clean profile rather than a grid. Warm white bulbs sit well against the gray clapboard and dark shutters without washing out the siding.
At the far corner, mini string lights through the small tree pick up the same tone, so the lighting does not simply stop where the roof ends.
The result
Seen from the corner of the lawn, the three roof levels read as one continuous outline, and the screened porch is framed without lighting its interior. The lit tree balances the tall front gable on the opposite side of the view, which keeps the composition from feeling weighted to one end.
